Customer Value Design

Customer & Competitive Market Research

Finding your unique value curve

Even in today's economy the basic principles of value prevail. Customers still buy based on the intricate relationship between perceived quality and perceived price. Riverdale works with its clients to identify and unlock this value. We’ve not only helped clients expand the boundaries of their existing industry. We also have experience in developing completely new industries with complex, disruptive technology platforms and business models. Our research programs use a variety of primary and secondary research techniques best designed to efficiently answer fundamental business questions that ensure you are relevant in your target markets.

Building customer relevance is a big part of market success. But how do you build this quickly, especially in new markets? To answer this question, we pragmatically start with a study of your customer experience from the view of all the “problems” they need to solve. But as solutions addressing customer problems become more complex, it's increasingly unlikely that customers will have a precise decision process for recognizing the value delivered. It is also difficult for these same customers to be accurate when quantifying what they feel they should pay for a solution. Our customer and market research assignments are designed to quickly help you identify how your company’s products or services can be most relevant to customers. From in-person focus groups to large online surveys to detailed usage and attitude studies, we can help better identify key market segments and frame your value proposition for success.

Next comes competitive differentiation. We’ve found that pursuing incremental improvements for customers through either low cost or differentiation alone doesn’t work over the long run. That’s why we use customer value design and planning techniques that help companies make giant leaps in the value provided to customers through the pursuit of market differentiation and lower costs – this is most often the winning formula in many complex, competitive markets today. Our competitive benchmarking and category mapping techniques are a proven way to help identify key opportunities to differentiate your products and services against other market players. We identify how you can offer buyers a huge leap in value that will give rise to new markets. That’s how you make the competition irrelevant. That’s how you win.

Product Management

A pragmatic, market-driven approach to profitable products

Market-driven product management is the key to building successful and profitable product solutions. We’ve spent many years working with customers, prospects and key opinion leaders to identify their most urgent pain-points and requirements in a disciplined process of bringing a product to market.

It starts with understanding what your company really has in terms of market potential and ability to serve customers. We’re experienced at bridging outside industry, competitive and product research with information that is currently sitting in many of your internal departments. Starting with the development of market requirements and customer use-case scenarios we can help you build the optimal business case and product development strategy with pricing and payback analysis to maximize profitability.

Riverdale consultants work as part of your overall team in areas that are critical to successful development, market introduction and support of product/services. Some of the key areas where we provide product management assistance include:

Product Development

Identifying new market opportunities (aligned with the company's core competencies)

Creating a business case (product pricing, packaging and operational metrics)

Developing milestones for the development team (product specification)

Go-to-Market

Product positioning strategies

Product launch plans

Sales process workflow and documentation

Lead generation opportunities

Standard presentations and demo scripts

White papers and technical communications

Channel Development & Support

Documenting competitive threats and related industry news

Facilitating direct sales and channel training

Providing support at trade shows and company-sponsored events

Channel support and onsite assistance

Brand Strategy & Market Positioning

Find the unoccupied space…then own it

A brand isn’t just a logo or tagline. It isn’t just advertising. It’s a promise of value you deliver to customers. In an over-communicated world, great brands are the mental file folder that customers access when making the most complex of buying decisions. A clearly defined brand and market position instills confidence and eliminates confusion. The best brands evoke an emotional response from their customers - communicating who you are to the global marketplace, transcending language and geographic barriers. And they can be a major factor in maintaining the price of your products and services. No wonder brands are gaining more importance. Your brand is in essence, what people think of you – your company and your products.

It’s a mistake to start the process of branding using an overly artistic approach which generates lots of creative and adds unnecessary cost to the project. Instead Riverdale uses focused, pragmatic methods that deliver more value, especially for smaller, mid-sized organizations that are competing in B2B markets. A clearly and consistently articulated brand moves beyond marketing to align internal and external components of your business’ strategy, product development as well as the traditional means of communications like advertising, PR and collateral.

We understand that in today's crowded market it's essential to find the unoccupied space. And while getting there first helps, it's more essential that your company is seen as owning this space - it's the secret to maximizing your mindshare with customers, media, and technology analysts. Riverdale has experience developing and positioning products and corporate brands in some very innovative ways. We start with an understanding of your corporate strategy. Then we focus on framing your products, services and company in ways that clearly map to the most important attributes that your target market segment cares about. Lastly we show you how to package your customer value, transcending product jargon and moving to quantifiable financial benefits.

And because not everybody is reachable in the same manner or looks at your solution the same way, Riverdale employs detailed “information architecture mapping” exercises to identify how your market messages interoperate with various communications vehicles that are available – with a focus on low cost/high impact activities. Our partnership with XPLANE, a leader in visual thinking also provides you with access to world-class resources that compliment your Riverdale team. And since we specialize in working with complex technology solutions we also can show you how to tap into the high percentage of decision makers who are also visual thinkers. Our approach to "process-driven visualization" helps our clients engage their customers faster and deliver more impact than standard product-centric approaches.